Tuesday, September 4, 2012

I finally caught up on The Newsroom. It's an absurd show. The show was designed solely to attack the Tea Party, as if the Tea Party is the most important news event in the history of the world. Worse, good journalism, according Aaron Sorkin, seems to be airing sound bites of a bunch of people. There is no rigorous analysis, any attempt to pin down the size or scope of the Tea Party, what most of its members believe, what most think is important. They treat the Tea Party as a monolithic group of dishonest dummies. That may well be true, but The Newsroom sure as hell doesn't come close to proving that. The funny thing is, Will accuses the Tea Party of being against science and yet it's these journalists who make conclusions with no scientific rigor. You can find more of my rantings on Twitter. What I wonder is whether Sorkin himself was out to "civilize," because The Newsroom will only make conservatives hate liberals more, and make liberals hate conservatives more.

I also caught up on Copper. While the setting and tone of the show is nice, the characterization of Corcoran has been sketchy, often contradictory. He's set up to be a good guy sometimes, in the vein of cops you'd see in modern procedurals, but at other times it seems like he's just another guy living back then with all the stuff they did.

Grimm made big advances with Hank fully accepting everything Nick tells him. He takes it all in stride, and the episode doesn't slow down for those "show me the evidence" moments. It also looks like Juliette may be learning soon, as she at least hears the word Grimm. Beyond that, Monroe and Rosalie are as great as ever. Things are looking up this season.

Breaking Bad: Every viewer knew the other shoe would drop in the midseason finale. There was no way Breaking Bad would end the summer without a final bombshell leading to Walt's demise. So the episode is winding down and nothing happens yet. Are bullets going to fly into the yard and hit Holly? No, it's Hank taking a shit. The great Heisenberg, ruined by a bowel movement. Walt's arrogance and carelessness has led him to this point when he allows this book to do him in. The rest of the episode was fun stuff with two great montages showing how Walt got to the now. Now we'll have to wait for the final 8 episodes next season and Walt's final downfall.

Damages comes to an end in less than two weeks and those ominous images of Ellen dead appear related to Patty's attempt to kill her. The past two episodes have spent a great deal of time on this issue--first Patty stating she wasn't behind the attempted hit, then Ellen looking deeper and finding the guy. Another big issue which could cause problems is Chris getting the PTSD information to McClaren. It's kind of a random plot right now, I could see Ellen having to sell Chris out for one reason or another, becoming Patty in the process. The details of the case are still murky, but with Torben in the picture and Gitta going behind Ellen's back, stuff has to get going soon. We learned some of Patty and Kate's backstory, though I'm not sure if any of it is relevant or even particularly interesting. I guess extra bits of information don't hurt.

Covert Affairs: Annie's greatest asset as a spy is her ability to connect with people. Unfortunately, it's also her greatest weakness. Simon has to be playing her, right? Lena keeps hyping him as a master spy, so Annie fooling him would be way too stupid. Unless of course he's actually undercover and a good friend of Ben, and the two of them killed Jai on Arthur's orders and Joan, somewhat unwillingly, has been subtly pushing Annie towards Simon, using Lena as a proxy, which explains why she's been standoffish towards Arthur. Okay, probably too complicated, but I expect big shenanigans to happen.